The 3rd generation iPod Shuffle has some great features that the old units lack – not the least of which is its 4GB capacity worth 1,000 songs – plus the ability to create playlists and a “VoiceOver” feature that announces (when you wish) what song is playing and who the artist is. All for the same price as the 2nd gen unit originally sold for – just $79. (click on the picture to the left to see the unit @ Amazon.)

What’s not to love? I’m glad you asked: with the new unit, you are required to use the funky Apple earbuds as the controls are on the earbud cable. Not so cool, especially in light of the fact that the Apple earbuds utterly suck.

But where there’s a will there’s a way, and the enterprising (read: soldering-iron-wielding) folks over at TechSpank created a video tutorial on how to swap out the Apple earbuds for your favorite earbuds while saving the control; check it out:

One important point: make sure you can easily disassemble the earbuds you want to use BEFORE beginning this process!

As the title of this post suggests, this mod is relevant to the iPhone and iPod Touch as well. Please comment if you’ve performed this simple hack.

The fine print (literally!!): I am an Amazon affiliate and this post contains affiliate links.

I am really disappointed that Apple put a mini-stereo jack input on the end of the “control panel” portion of the earphone cable so you could easily unplug the current earphones and replace them with others.

Would it have been that hard to do?

The “control panel” would have been a little larger, but designing it like that would still keep the controls closer to reach while allowing many, many different headsets to be used.

Not to mention, what about feeding this into a car stereo auxiliary input jack? That’s blown out the window now, so using this for podcasts and books on tape isn’t much of an option.

In many ways the last generation was more functional. Apple should have added secondary controls to the last one (on the earphone cable) not stripped controls off the current unit.

Hi there I know that this form is old but I have a question here I know that when you put the USB audio connector into the jack and plug the USB onto the machine and it calls up the iTunes. Is there a way to add another connection onto it to call up different features